Zodiac

[private witt]

Also, while I hate the eye-rolling Vinyl guys too, Vinyl does capture ranges that a CD doesn't... so, unfortunately, you're wrong there, too.

Ever listened to an SACD?  Sample an analog waveform at 160,000 times a second and the human ear can't tell the difference between that and live music. 

[mogwai]

more pics:

[Tictacbk]

Looks like someone beat him to the punch?  Too bad Fincher's will kick this movies ass.

Heres the trailer for "The Zodiac"...
http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/thezodiac/

[Redlum]

However, the majority of high end magazine and fine art photography still  uses film predominantly.

Digital = Best Buy ads
Film = Vanity Fair (who i think have some of the best magazine photographers working)

Also don't proffessional shoots use 120mm film as opposed to 35mm so that shots can be blown up to ridiculous sizes? I don't beleive there is a digital camera that can acheive that kind of resolution.

Digital to me is like modern supermarkets - its only really about convenience.

Oh, and Zodiac....nice to see Robert Downey Jr working alot lately.

[MacGuffin]

A Look at the Zodiac Script

Over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffery Wells had a look at James Vanderbilt's script for Zodiac and was impressed -- in fact, he describes it as potentially a "truly exceptional hunt-for-a-serial-killer movie" (admittedly a fairly small niche), the last of which, Wells believes, was Seven, also directed by David Fincher. The review is more of an overview than anything else and, assuming that you know how the Zodiac killer case was "resolved," you won't find any spoilers there. Generally speaking, Wells thinks Jake Gyllenhaal's role as cartoonist Robert Graysmith (on whose books the movie is based) is, at least on paper, "the best he's ever had," and makes it sounds like the ending (which he doesn't describe) is just as dark and depressing as Seven's:





Obsession
The last truly exceptional hunt-for-a-serial-killer movie was David Fincher's Se7en. And the next one, I'm fairly convinced, is going to be Fincher's Zodiac (Paramount, 11.10).

I'm basing this on a recent read of James Vanderbilt's script, which runs 150-plus pages. This persuades me that what I heard last week is true: Zodiac is going to be a three-hour movie, or close to it.

Scripts never really tell you that much, but reading Zodiac planted an idea that Fincher is again pushing the thriller boundary. Not just in the tradition of Se7en but also Alan Parker's Angel Heart, another chasing-a-monster film that ended with something pretty startling.

Zodiac is based on two best-sellers by Robert Graysmith, "Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer Revealed", which are first-hand accounts about the hunt for the Zodiac killer who terrified the San Francisco area in 1968 and '69.

The chief Zodiac hunters in Fincher's film (as they were in actual life) are Gray- smith, a San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist at the time (Jake Gyllenhaal), and a blunt-spoken, never-say-die San Francisco detective named Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo).

Toschi is understood to have been the real-life model that Steve McQueen based his tough-nut San Francisco detective on in the 1968 Peter Yates film Bullitt.

And of course, the Zodiac killer was the model for Andy Robinson's psycho killer in Dirty Harry , the 1971 Don Siegel-Clint Eastwood classic...right down to the Zodiac claim about wanting to kill a busload of school children.

Zodiac is partly about the thrill and fascination of the hunt (the scores of hints and clues that pile up are more and more fascinating as the story moves along), and partly about how the complex, seemingly never-ending nature of the case makes Graysmith and Toschi start to go a bit nuts.

Is there such a thing as being too determined to stop evil? At what point do you ease up and say, "I've done all I can." Is it always essential to finish what you've started? Should never-say-die always be the motto, even at great personal cost?

Zodiac isn't just about sleuthing. Deep down I think it's a metaphor piece about obsessions wherever you find them, and how the never-quit theme applies to heavily-driven creative types (novelists, painters, architects, musicians) as much as cops or cartoonists or stamp collectors or baseball-card traders.

Zodiac and Se7en have at least a couple of things in common: both are heavily focused on the bottled-up emotions and personal frustrations of their two main protagonists, and both films end on a note in which the "crime doesn't pay" motto doesn't exactly ring out from the belltower.

Let's just say it: these are two catch-the-bad-guy movies in which the good guys try like hell, but they can't quite manage to be McQueen or Eastwood in the end.

Partly because the up-and-down life of a cop generally isn't that heroic or simple. And because Fincher would probably have trouble staying awake if somebody forced him to direct a Bullitt or a Dirty Harry.

Fincher and screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker ended Se7en with a mind-blowing twist in which the killer won and the good guys lost, and in such a way that the final fate of the killer didn't matter as much as the fact that his vision (which had a certain moral foundation) ended up being fulfilled.

The more I think about Se7en, the more certain I am that it was and is a truly brilliant cop thriller. Not just in the way the story was put together and paid off, but because it echoed a certain clouds-are-forming, it's-all-starting-to-rot-from-within attitude...a kind of geiger-counter reading of the despair in the air in 1994 and '95, when Se7en was made and released.

I attended a Writers Guild event last night that celebrated the 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written, and bless their hearts but the WGA voters were blind as bats for not including Se7en.

I'm not going to spill the Zodiac finale in any detail, but anyone who's read even a little bit about the the hunt for the Zodiac killer knows the culprit was never charged or convicted, although his more ardent pursuers were convinced that he was a pudgy alcoholic and an ex-school teacher named Arthur Leigh Allen, who died in 1992.

The script uses a substitute name instead of Allen's. It wouldn't be that big of a deal to mention it, but I'm trying to go lightly here.

Graysmith is the best part Gyllenhaal has ever had, and I'm including Jack Twist in this equation. If he does it right he'll generate a lot of heat for himself, and I can't see how he wouldn't.

Graysmith is a very strongly written guy with a lot of struggle and frustration inside, and the pressure on him just builds and builds. The coup de grace comes at the end when Graysmith delivers a spellbinding 12-page oratory that ties up all the loose ends. (I was reminded of Simon Oakland's this-is-what-actually-happened speech at the end of Psycho.)

Robert Downey, Jr. has several good scenes as a Chronicle reporter named Avery. It seems at first as if he'll be a prominent costar along with Gyllenhaal and Ruffalo, but nope. Anthony Edwards, as Toschi's partner, has a smaller role than Downey.

Dermot Mulroney, Chloe Sevigny, Ione Skye, Donal Logue and Brian Cox have supporting roles. The IMDB says Cox plays famed San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, but my script doesn't even have Belli in it.

[Anonymous Joe]

Fincher talks about using Final Cut Studio on Zodiac.

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/profiles/?profiles/apple_fcs_profile-fincher_h640

[Anonymous Joe]

nobody cares about this?

[Pubrick]

nobody cares about this?

uh.. the thread's up to 5 pages now. are you asking just because no one praised your stupid link? otherwise what's there to care about? the movie's not out yet. geez, look at how many news articles Mac posts and no one replies to. it doesn't mean we don't read it or that we don't care. anyway why am i even answering your ridiculous query? oh shit if you dont' reply within 3 days to this rhetorical question it means i'm not loved. woe is me.

[Anonymous Joe]

how is the link stupid? did you even watch it?

[Pubrick]

how is the link stupid? did you even watch it?

have you encountered this usage of the word stupid before? stupid as in "insignificant".. i could just as well have used "stinkin" or "fucking"..

"how is the link fucking?"
"how is the link stinking? did you smell it?"

go back to lurking, you stinkin fool.

[Anonymous Joe]

insignificant? Its an interview with Fincher and his editor with clips from the movie, id say thats pretty significant.

[Julius Orange]

I'm never visiting this thread again because of too much reading when I get here.

Thanks

*Just if someone asks for me in the thread

[Anonymous Joe]

I totally owned this argument any ways....

[hedwig]

you just totally owned yourself, you Anonymous Joke.

[Anonymous Joe]

okay... Hedwigger!